"What the hell is a polymath?" Was all Owen could think after reading the item description for the pill he had gained. His system panel was still a dark red, though he hadn't seen the reasoning for why yet. Holding the marble between his thumb and forefinger he rolled it back and forth debating in his head.
He knew he was going to take it, having a skill that was an upgrade, despite never having used the original skill was not something he felt like he could pass up. However, he had an ominous feeling as he stared into the marble's center.
Every single monster he had fought so far had had their corpse sucked into this marble to form it. He thought he understood why, cause they were all monkey's, but simply based off of the system messages, it had only said it would contain the knowledge of the emperors, which made it so that it shouldn't have needed any of the monkey's nearby.
He was also concerned about the Red system messages, it had always been a slightly transparent blue coloring, but was a solid deep red coloring now. The weirdest part was there was still no apparent warning for the change though, just the marble he now held.
He let his thoughts wander as he tried to compare his experience to something, anything, that he could remember. It was interesting, his thoughts flowed much more naturally since he had begun the tutorial. There were no hiccups or tangents that his brain would wander down. It was easy for him to recall a wuxia novel he had read once.
Wuxia was a martial arts based genre of media that had been paired heavily with the grinding aspects of the litrpg genre. Slowly gaining power until they either saved the world or had become the strongest and ascended into the heavens. Pills were a foundational element to most every one of these stories. They were considered treasures and had a myriad of effects as well.
He stared deep into the marble and activated his identify skill.
*This is the epic item 'Pill of the Jeweled Emperor Polymath'. This Pill when consumed will upgrade the skill 'Identify' to the skill 'Polymath's Keen Eye'.*
Well isn't that the most helpful, it was just the same thing he had learned about it from the other system message when he got it. Deciding that it couldn't be too bad for him, since it was the ultimately the results of the systems doing. He clenched his fist and tossed the marble into his mouth and swallowed.
Sadly, he wasn't the cool type of guy from the movies that could take his pills no water every time, but he was doing his best. The next several minutes were filled with gagging sounds as the pill had gotten lodged in his throat. Feeling somewhat embarrassed, he sat down against a tree and began to meditate.
As he cycled his breathing, he imagined the pill inside of him slowly breaking down and being absorbed into his core. He wasn't positive what force was directing his thoughts as his imagination began to run wild.
He had a blue core in the center of his being. Flames danced around its borders gaining the same multicolored hue as the pill he had ingested. As it broke down inside of his core, its deep blue seemed to shimmer for only a second, but then a vast energy seemed to flood through his body.
He wasn't sure how long it had been since closing his eyes, but when he opened them he was surprised to see it was pitch black out. Slightly worried he had wasted a lot of time, he looked through his skills and couldn't help but grin.
*You have gained the skill 'Polymath's Keen Eye'. This skill is the result of absorbing the knowledge of the Jeweled Monkey Emperor's inheritance. This skill allows you to more accurately identify people's souls, basic herbs, and items. Must have a mana stat of at least 50 for full effect. Can be used at a lower stat value, but will grant the user a lesser version. *
Owen wasn't sure what the first thing meant, but the other two were amazing. In everything he had ever read or played as a game, the items and other collectables were some of the most important. Smiling, he saw another notification that surprised him.
*Congratulations, you have absorbed the mana contained within this amulet. The plus 5 additional stats points while wearing this item, have turned into 2 permanent stats points in your mana stat.*
This time Owen wasn't sure how to feel, he lost 3 mana points, but the trade off was he did technically gain 2. He decided to keep the amulet on, despite no longer needing to, he couldn't be sure how much it might be worth and he certainly wasn't just going to abandon it for someone else to find. The last notification was just as good as the one before if not better.
*Congratulations, you have gained 2 stat point(s) in your Mana stat.*
He had never felt better, he couldn't recall ever having had a day where he had been this motivated or able to get as much done as he had in the past day and a half. Realizing it had been a short while since he last looked at the countdown, he pulled it up.
*Gain a minimum of 4 levels - Completed, Gain at least 1 combat skill - Completed, and reach the rest zone at the peak of the mountain in the center of the island. 34:01:54secs.*
Owen blanched. How the hell had he lost 15 hours. While he still had a decent amount of time he had been hoping to try and visit a couple of the other biomes, just to see what it was like and maybe if there had been a hidden glade or 2 it could've worked out well.
It took him a couple hours but he managed to make it to the edge of the jungle biome. All around him was grassy plains, but almost as if the whole world were placed onto a clock, he could see several others types of biomes that surprised him.
Of course there were the biomes directly next to the one he was in, the desert to his east and the snow fields to the west. Having finally made it past, he could see so much more. There were several types of biomes in sight, some being rocky, rainforest like, or even some stretches of more plains. Some were duplicates, but he couldn't be sure until the sun would come up all the way.
He continued to march for the rest of the night into the early morning. He tried to see how far away the peak of the mountain was now, but with how close he was, he couldn't see where it flattened out. He checked how long was left and felt a little bit of his worry fade away.
*27:53:28secs.*
If he kept up his current pace, he was pretty sure he could make it to the top within the next 3 or so hours, so he decided to take a break. Even though he didn't have any injuries since the boss fight, his calves and feet were more sore than he could ever remember them being. Before the system, he had a semi consistent workout schedule, but never with enough focus on the legs.
He tried thinking back to when he had been fighting the giant monkey boss and how he had channeled his HP into his injured areas somehow and they had slowly healed. He tried again, this time trying to get them to make his calves not sore. He was surprised at how little effort it took, as the pain immediately seemed to magically disperse. Which after thinking for a moment he supposed it was kind of magic.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Chuckling slightly to himself, he tried running his HP throughout most of his body, trying to heal every ache and pain he could think of. After several minutes of what felt like the greatest massage that somehow happened in his body, he went to get up and begin the last several hours of his trek when his body wouldn't respond. He slowly fell onto his back and began to panic.
He tried to move anything, but the only thing that worked seemed to be his eyes, everything else was as if he had gotten paralyzed.
He had yet closed the countdown and all he could do was watch it slowly tick down, minutes slowly turned into an hour and ever so slowly he could feel some energy coming back to him. He immediately began to channel his HP into his body to try and help get himself up and moving again. Just before he could, a voice cut through the silence. "What the fuck are you doing?" He heard footsteps slowly get closer and someone squatted down next to his head.
"Are you an idiot? Otherwise, why does it look like you are purposely trying to starve your vitality, it doesn't raise the same as other stats. You actually have to put points into it." Owen tried to shift his head to look at the person berating them. He wanted to be upset with them, but after taking a look at his HP and seeing it had barely broken back past 25 out of the 400 total he had, he kept himself quiet.
The person who had found him was now clearly a woman, based off both the voice and her introducing herself as Myra. He began slowly shifting his body into a sitting position, letting himself see her for the first time.
She had a platinum blonde wolf cut hairstyle, that barely reached her shoulders. He couldn't quite tell for sure, but her eyes looked a greenish blue color and she stood no shorter than himself. She was wearing a pair of black joggers and regular tennis shoes, the thing that stood out most about her though was the enormous breastplate she was wearing. In the center was an incredibly detailed emerald snake emblazoned onto the surface, while the rest of the breastplate looked like it was made out of a mirror with how polished it had been.
Owen wasn't quite sure how that was possible based on the environment they were in, but nonetheless it only added to the positive impression he had on her, despite the berating.
"Very classy," He heard and he pulled his eyes up to her face to see her very clearly unimpressed. It took him a moment before he began to blush. "I'm really sorry, I promise I was just looking at the breastplate. I came out of the jungle biome over there just a couple hours ago and despite fighting some enemies and getting loot, nothing like that ever dropped for me." He didn't even notice as his eyes shifted back down to inspect the snake.
It looked like it could come alive at any moment. Arms crossed in front of the snake and Owen looked up to Myra's face again with an embarrassed expression on his face. She stared back at him for only a moment, before turning around and scanning the side of the mountain which was only a 15 minutes walk away at most. "My sister Peggy should be on her way here soon, she was scouting in the other direction when I found you. Is there anyone in your group I should know about?" Myra said turning back to him.
Owen was slightly confused, "No, I didn't join this as part of any group, I was sort of just thrown in on the beach on the other side of the jungle biome. In fact, I haven't seen anyone until right now." "Hmm interesting, we will have to wait until Peggy gets here, so that we can talk as a group. I don't want to have to sit through this conversation twice." Owen instead of having the countdown displayed had changed it to his HP and MP display, slowly watching his HP build up.
It was slow, not more than 25 points an hour, but the feeling of fatigue was leaving as his points went up so he bore with it. Since he hadn't been told how long it might take for Peggy to arrive, he began slowly focusing in on his breathing. He tried to pull in as much air as possible through his nose and let it slowly release over several seconds. He kept himself focused like this until he felt a hard flick against his forehead.
Falling onto his back he looked up to see Myra grinning and another woman, who he guessed was Peggy staring down at him now. She was beautiful, but sort of in the way that a student might find their English teacher attractive. She had black hair tied back into a neat bun with dazzling dark brown eyes. Stood maybe a couple centimeters short than Myra. She was wearing a thin rain jacket and jeans, looking far more normal than her sister with the ridiculous breastplate.
Deciding this was when he was supposed to be angry, he said. "Now what the hell was that for?" "You weren't responding and we don't want to waste too much time getting to the peak." Peggy said while shrugging her shoulders. "Either way I'm Peggy, and since you've met Myra I guess those are our introductions."
Owen pushing himself up and onto his feet, made sure to try and brush every bit of dirt or debris on his clothes before talking. Expecting to see slightly annoyed looks, he was not very surprised, but slightly disappointed when they didn't have any reaction at all. "Well, I am Owen. I spawned in over on the other side of that jungle biome," he said while pointing at it.
"Where are your other group members?" Owen wasn't sure what they were talking about. "Again, like I told Myra, I showed up by myself on the beach directly on the other side of that area alone. I fought my way through and made it here without ever coming across anyone. I know there were supposed to be like 99 others or something, but I've only seen you two."
Both Peggy and Myra immediately began whispering back and forth, but given that they were hardly more than a meter or so away, it wasn't hard to overhear. "Hasn't everyone we have come across been part of a group? How is this the only guy so far that wasn't?" Peggy whispered. Myra nodded.
"Something he is saying doesn't feel like it adds up, but I guess we are all new to the tutorial, maybe some didn't get groups with the hope of thinning the herd? I mean I did have to tell this guy not to starve his vitality." They both laughed like doing so was the stupidest thing and Owen had to fight back a blush.
How had he been supposed to know what he was doing on accident. It's not like he had more people to help him learn about this round of the tutorial. He had been all alone.
Deciding to interrupt he decided it was his turn to ask a few questions. "In the waiting area before we got teleported here, did you get moved to the same location as people who had been nearby you?" Myra stared at him like he was an idiot, but Peggy had a thoughtful expression.
"Not exactly, Myra and I were trying to find others from our group of 100 to team up with us and try to meet inside of the round. I hadn't been nearby Myra when we got moved here, but maybe because we decided we wanted to try and find a way to do it together, it teleported us together maybe?" Now all three of them had confused looks on their faces.
"I suppose that is similar to the situation I had originally been in. I was nearby several of my coworkers who are huge dicks and they wanted me to join their group, but I told their leader to fuck off while we were being teleported and ended up on the beach after with no one in sight."
Peggy nodded uncertainly before saying, "Can you give Myra and I a moment, we need to talk about some things." Owen shrugged and started flipping through his system menus, while both women moved just out of range to listen in.
*Congratulations, You have gained 1 additional stat point(s) in your Mana stat.*
Deciding it was time, he threw his last unallocated stat point into Vitality and looked through his status page.
Owen - Human: Level 6
Vitality = 5
Mana = 9
Strength = 6 + 2
Perception = 9
Agility = 10
Resilience = 4 + 2
Dexterity = 9 + 1
Luck = 5 + 1
Experience 0 out of 70
Skills
Self Creator - You have created for yourself a new body that will let you take part in the system. Self Creator will allow the user to redesign their body, however will this process will not change the users mana signature. This skill has a 24 hour cooldown period
Basic Spear Thrust - You have shown an amateur understanding of how to use spears when thrusting. When thrusting your spear for an attack, gain the ability to charge mana into your thrust. Charging mana into your attack deals an additional 1% to 20% damage based on how much mana in charged into the attack.
Sneak Attack - You have demonstrated the ability to kill your enemies from the shadows. Deal twice the amount of damage when your enemy has failed to noticed your presence. If Sneak Attack is used on an enemy, then when that enemy dies, only gain 50% of the experience you would've earned.
Polymath's Keen Eye - This skill is the result of absorbing the knowledge of the Jeweled Monkey Emperor's inheritance. This skill allows you to more accurately identify people's souls, basic herbs, and items. Must have a mana stat of at least 50 for full effect. Can be used at a lower stat value, but will grant the user a lesser version.
Feeling rather proud of himself, he closed out of his menus to see Peggy and Myra walking back towards him. Both seemed rather hesitant now, maybe on guard was a better word for it, he thought. When they were both standing before him, Myra cleared her throat and asked, "Can we see your status?"